The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

her text had been “written in its first form before his”. Indeed, Taylor added an
annotation to her diary that Jaffe had “[come] to the house” and “had seen my notes on
the subject”. 17 Tabata reported that A.C. Jordan had been moved to compare Taylor’s
book with Jaffe’s. Mnguni had marshalled “dates and facts as ends in themselves”,
Jordan had suggested, whereas in Majeke’s work, “facts and dates [were] used to
support a thesis”. 18
Tabata supported Taylor in her writing, and put some effort and “enthusiasm” into
selling copies of her book “as never for his own”. He also read Taylor a letter sent from
Fort Hare, which had expressed “deep‐felt praise” for “the book by the unknown
author”. It had “simplicity and feeling”, the writer suggested, and the author “ha[d] felt
it in his/her soul”. 19 He also reported to Taylor that her book had “caused general
excitement” at the 1953 CATA conference. It had been sold “to the queerest assortment
of people ‐ students, teachers, peasants, storekeepers, ministers and school managers”. It
was “a document worthy of pride of place in the literature of the movement” and most
17 Dora Taylor, Extended Diary, entry for 2 June 1953 and subsequently added annotations, Dora
Taylor Papers. I would like to thank Doreen and Michael Muskett for giving me access to these diaries.
Note that the ‘extended diary’ should be distinguished from the ‘pocket diary’, which recorded
activities and feelings intermittently in very cryptic ways, much like a journal. Dora Taylor’s extended
diary was her means of recording her political thinking as well as her feelings about her writing,
relationships and place in the world. Written in seclusion, Taylor recorded her insecurities and private
inner conflicts. Though some of her passages were written to Tabata, it is likely that part of her may
not have intended these for perusal. But another part of her must also have had some knowledge that
it might be read in the future. For a discussion of this paradox, especially in the case of diaries of
women authors, as well as other questions such as their cumulative, cyclical structure, see Judy
Simons, Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, London: MacMillan,
1990.
18 I.B. Tabata to Dora Taylor, 1 July 1953, Tabata Collection, BC 925. Hosea Jaffe (‘Mnguni’), with
whom Taylor and Tabata were beginning to have political differences from the early‐to‐mid 1950s,
published Three Hundred Years: A History of South Africa (Cape Town: New Era Fellowship, 1952) to
coincide with the boycott of the Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival of the apartheid state. See Ciraj
Rassool, ‘Going Back to Our Roots’ and Bill Nasson, ‘The Unity Movement: Its Legacy in Historical
Consciousness’, Radical History Review, No 46/7, January 1990. For a discussion of resistance to the Van
Riebeeck Festival in 1952, see Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz, ‘The 1952 Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary
Festival: Constructing and Contesting Public National History in South Africa’, Journal of African
History, 34, 1993 and Leslie Witz, Apartheid’s Festival: Contesting South Africa’s National Pasts,
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003.
19 Dora Taylor, Extended Diary, entries for 25 & 27 May 1953, Dora Taylor Papers.
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